Silken Evils - Book One

Book-One in the "Silken Evils" collection contains four female-led works of horror and the occult from Rafael Menton.

With "A Chinese Horror", Rafael Menton takes us back to the period of post-Suez London, and the tale of how a highly-regarded heart surgeon makes visual acquaintance with a woman of indeterminate ethnic background at a party and finds his life spiralling out of control. Which is when he receives a letter from a professor and old friend, recently returned from mainland China after one of his frequent trips to acquire both knowledge and antiquities. A letter inviting him to dinner at a Hampstead address¿ And an invitation that will lead to the end of his life as both a doctor and a man!

Our next tale is "The Dark Depths".

A young and academically gifted undergrad; a learned ex-cop; and a Japanese heiress; all have one thing in common. A recently unearthed tome called the "Book of Witches". A book with a previously undeciphered incantation that could mean tyranny, suppression, and a complete loss of independence if it is invoked¿ Especially for men.

Next up is "A Woman of Haiti".

It is 1911, and a respected Professor and most keenly felt man-of-learning is invited to a gathering at a friend's in order to witness the "gift" of a young woman visiting from the Caribbean. The prospect does not sit well with him, but he agrees to put in an appearance after being informed his fiancé will also be attending to witness their friend's latest star-turn and practitioner of mesmerism.

Made cynical by his insistence upon empirical evidence and a thoroughgoing incredulity when it comes to the mystical and magical beliefs, he accepts the challenge of the young island woman and allows her to try and put him under her mesmeric spell¿ A decision he will regret until his dying day, as his privileged life is dismantled about his head¿ And in the most ignominious of ways...

Mr Menton's final tale is "Bad Move".

A good cop with sexual demons, who is about to go bad, comes face to face with a woman who has been in that condition for a long time. A wealthy Arab woman with secrets of the most repellent kind he is about to try and blackmail. Only to find he will be the one who finds himself at her mercy and that of her two female assistants. And in a far more permanent way.

If you enjoy stories that trigger the darker erotic areas of the imagination and like tales of assertive women that are believable as well as dark, you are likely to delight in this collection of stories from a female-led perspective on the subject of crime, horror, the occult and the bondage of man to woman.

Rafael Menton is a Professor of English Literature with a retro passion for the early to mid-twentieth-century fiction of mystery, crime, suspense, and horror with erotic undertones; ranging from Doyle and Blackwood and on to Rohmer ¿ as well as sometimes indulging in a more contemporary take of his own on the work of those masters.

Dettagli